Indian Parliament

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“This session, Lok Sabha had been scheduled to work for 156 hours and Rajya Sabha for 130 hours. However, the actual productive time was 104 hours in Lok Sabha and 81 hours in Rajya Sabha,” says PRS Legislative Research.

The worst performance was recorded in the Winter Session of 2010, when both Houses were frequently disrupted over the demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe into the 2G scam, says PRS.

What does all this mean? “Parliament spends Rs 29,000 on every minute of its functioning. Loss of an hour’s productivity sets Indian citizens back by Rs 17.4 lakh,” says a Yahoo! India report. The loss due to non-working of Parliament in the winter session of Parliament is estimated at Rs230 crore, according to the report.

Creator of new threads from offtopic posts

After election to Parliament, our representatives become entitled to certain amenities which are intended to enable the Members of Parliament to effectively perform their duties and responsibilities. We, the people of India, pay for all these amenities ------ a salary of Rs 50,000 per month, rent free residential accommodation in prime locations in the nation's capital, free water, free electricity, free telephone calls, free business class air travel, free first class rail travel, constituency allowance etc etc.It has been estimated that if monetary values are imputed to all the 16 components of an MP's package, then an MP's annual cost to the public exchequer is a little less than Rs 50 lakhs!

If you earned roughly Rs 50 lakhs a year, would you still want a Ration Card that entitles you to buy wheat and rice and kerosene and sugar from Fair Price Shops ? Our MPs do, it seems ----- for the convenience of the Members of Parliament, a Sub-Office of the Delhi Rationing Department is provided in the Parliament House so that the MPs can obtain Ration Cards.There's also an L.P.G. Service Counter and a branch of Kendriya Bhandar for the sale of essential commodities.